


Longshot Bet

by Shusu (Sameshima_Shuzumi)



Category: FLCL
Genre: Cover Art, F/M, Future Fic, Italy, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-15
Updated: 2006-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:15:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sameshima_Shuzumi/pseuds/Shusu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a Vespa falls out of the sky, does it make a sound?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longshot Bet

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my darling scuppernong for providing the Italian translations and cultural notes in my time of need. Thank you to Spoke and Lacey for the canon-beta. Thanks to infinimato, Kudra, and plsteward for the look-over. A big thank you to wordwitch for her superhuman efforts to beta on the fly! With apologies to the town of Pontedera, I tried to be as accurate as possible; the statue in the church is a Madonna and Child. And a good thing sucka15 had the series on YouTube, because I managed to misplace my tapes. Any mistakes came out of my head.  
>  _This story contains spoilers for the six-episode show, and as per request, references to underaged sex. The dub can be smoked on YouTube via user sucka15._  
>  ETA 20 August 2016: Added cover art. On a whim, of course. Base from Life of Pix.
> 
> Written for incoming

"I gotta go. My television just texted me."

*

The funny thing about childhood was that so much of it stayed vivid as the day it happened. Naota could turn it over in his head and still smell the grasses by the river, feel his brother's bat in his hands, hear the rising purr of a motorscooter carrying the evil alien who was about to slam him on the head with a Rickenbacker bass guitar.

He'd actually gotten out of Mabase and seen some really amazing things. The sky looked different everywhere, every new shade threatening to wash out all the days that came before. But the colors of those early memories stayed bright and tangible.

It was probably because those were kept inside one's heart.

*

Naota thought about calling Ninamori. For completeness' sake. She knew all his secrets, which still made him uncomfortable, but at least she didn't use them to lie. He walked past the church to the nearest _piazza_ , reminding himself that she was over there, and had probably already found out. Besides, it was close to midnight back in Mabase.

Here in Pontedera, naptime was nearly over. People were wandering out into streets: walking, riding, talking, filling his head with a strange chattering that was easy to tune out. He had been in the town long enough to know it was an ordinary, average afternoon.

Naota strolled over to a _gelato_ vendor and ordered a scoop of sour cherry.

At this point, a Vespa fell out of the sky.

The impact bent the trees and rattled the flagpoles. The drooping smears of cloud were swept from the sky by the heat wave. Without dropping his scoop, Naota walked past the screaming people and around the fissures in the cobblestones. He peered down the small crater in the center of the _piazza_.

"So," he said. "They kick you out?"

Police lights began to flash in the corner of his eye, but all he saw was the dazzling grin.

*

He was just a little kid when he first met Haruko. Just admitting that took years; he'd wanted so badly to be grown-up for her. To be a bigger man.

It took more than years to realize that Haruko didn't act like a grown-up at all. That made things... easier.

*

Naota ate his _gelato_ while Haruko argued (wailed dramatically) with the police. There had to be some kind of translator gizmo at work; Naota didn't really care. What mattered was that she couldn't mess with the molten-hot parts of her scooter just yet, and that she followed him to the little cafe down the road from the church.

"Aren't you going to say hello, Ta-kun?"

"Shouldn't you be worried about what they're doing to your scooter?"

Haruko was sniffing his _gelato_ as they walked into the cool of the cafe. Then she licked it. "I thought you didn't like sour."

"I don't."

The regular group was still there where he'd left them. His soft drink from before was taken out of the fridge, and Haruko promptly stole that too.

" _Who's your friend, Nito?_ " they greeted him.

They called him Ernesto because they always mangled his given name. Some of them thought it was funny that it ended in an 'A', like a girl's. They were okay, for friends. "She's..." Naota paused. What name would it be this time?

Big, feline eyes glanced up through pink hair. She said around her straw, " _I'm his girlfriend_ ," and made a sucking sound at the bottom of the glass.

"Why do you have to lie, Haruko?" said Naota flatly.

It was too late. They were slapping his back, laughing. They didn't blink when Haruko plunged her fingers in his hair as though she were looking for the seam.

Naota tried to shake her off. "Hey, quit it!"

" _She's possessive_ ," said one of the girls.

" _Nito!_ " The bar owner waved. " _The police say your friend's little wasp is ready._ " He made a lewd gesture.

Everyone laughed. Naota made a face.

Then Haruko took him by the shoulders and turned him around, just the same as before, in his space and larger than life. "Some things don't change, eh, Ta-kun?"

*

And Naota was twelve again, blushing like a little kid.

Back then he'd been so busy being exasperated and awed by the freeloading alien girl pretending to be their housekeeper that he hadn't really thought about how she looked. Haruko was a sprawl of limbs and a mess of teeth and big eyes that could cut right through like a dimension-unlocking guitar. It was all in his head, she said. He'd wanted to believe her.

*

Now, looking at her, he could see how boyish her figure really was. She was strung thin as a guitar string, always quivering for something.

"I wanted to believe you," he said.

"Oh, would you look at this, it's busted, it's totally busted!" She was digging through the debris and shaking brake fluid and what was probably rocket fuel all over the place. Naota tried to peek over her shoulder. Gears flew into the air and beaned him on the forehead.

"Ow!"

"Don't stand so close, then, Ta-kun," and there she was, solid curves with no room to spare him. She wasn't that tall. Naota wasn't that short, anymore. He breathed her in.

"Do you," he swallowed, "Do you want to grab a bite to eat?"

Her grin stretched. "Are you asking me out on a date, Ta-kun? Do you want to go stead-y?"

Was steady the same as smooth? Naota didn't know. "I want to pretend you weren't planning on leaving from the start."

"Oooh, someone's mad. If you haven't noticed," she knuckled the side of his skull, "I can't leave without the part for my scooter."

Naota took a deep breath. "Have dinner with me and I'll see what I can do to fix it."

"You're so kind, now, Ta-kun. I can hardly believe it's you." She swept up an armful of broken parts. "What do you know about it, huh?"

"This is Pontedera, Italy," said Naota. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned around. "The Vespa was invented here."

*

N.O. was the name of the channel her guitar opened in his head. It was something about the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. If there was just the right amount of difference between them, a gradient formed that could activate an inter-dimensional portal. N-O, _noh_ , no. Sometimes Naota thought he learned to say it after Haruko. Sometimes he knew he'd said it all along, but it was only after Haruko that they learned to listen.

She never did listen, of course.

*

Naota waved down the server. " _Ha la penne all'arrabiata? Grazie, portero quella, e l'usuale. Due cene._ "

"So what's the deal with you, huh?" Haruko had her boot up on the adjacent chair, her elbow by Naota's forks. "You know you can't build anything like my equipment."

Naota shrugged. "I went ahead with my own thing. What goes on inside my head was too complicated. I didn't trust the government with it. So I worked on the machines. There was an internship here at the Vespa plant, so that's what I've been doing."

"And of all their plants, you ended up at this one. That's a good one, Ta-kun. Almost convincing. You missed me, didn't you," she said smugly.

Naota just glared at her. "Eat your _antipasto_."

"This is what you call doing something with your life? Dwelling in the past that you couldn't control? What happened to swinging for the stars?"

"I like it this way." He tore into the bread. "I got out, didn't I?"

Haruko sniggered. Her hand whipped out to encompass the rooftops, the sky. "But it's all the same!"

And aside from the language, it was kind of the same as Mabase. Everyone knew each other. Everyone had their routine, and they did whatever they wanted to do anyway. Two rivers in a cup of a valley, a sky that was always the same.

"It's different," Naota said.

Haruko bit into the bread. "Too sweet!" She ate the loaf anyway. "What is this?"

"Pan di ramerino. Rosemary bread." He watched her wolf it down, a grimace on her face the whole time. He almost reached out to touch her, and picked up a fork instead. He'd gotten used to the casual touches here, hands flying in the air, people who wouldn't look away from you. It was a public sensuality that was almost too weird, too adventurous. Like Haruko, it was an acquired taste.

"So you're running away from home, Ta-kun."

"How'd *you* get kicked out this time?"

"It was just a mechanical problem." She downed her wine, and reached for Naota's.

"Hey!"

"You drink wine? How adult of you."

Naota clenched a hand under the table. "It's cheap and it tastes good with the food. And I didn't run away from home. I go back at the end of the summer."

"Yeah, really?"

The piping hot pasta dish slammed on the table.

"It's my brother who ran away," Naota said.

*

Naota's first trip out of Japan was to visit his brother. He had to move the date over so he'd arrive when his brother's baseball team was in town. Tasuku was in the minor leagues; they caught a taxi from the airport to catch the team bus. It was weeks of talking about numbers. Averages and percentages and indexes. How much the Japanese players were earning. How much his latest American girlfriend wanted to spend. Nothing about the magical arc of maplewood meeting the ball, nothing about aiming for the upper atmosphere. It was some town next to the ocean where Naota first heard anyone talking about the joy of swinging the bat, and it had been the grandchild of a veteran scout.

As a treat, Tasuku had brought Naota to Manhattan.

Naota had stood in the midst of the skyscrapers and said, "Yeah, it's okay."

*

Haruko tasted. "Spicy, oooh, hot, hot," Haruko said, and dug in.

"So, Haruko. Are you going to save me the trouble and tell me?"

"Confesh my undyingsh affection?" She slurped her pasta till it splattered them both, and that was just unfair.

Naota narrowed his eyes at her, dabbing at his face while she licked at hers. "No. I mean, why are you here? They're onto you, you know. The people at the plant. They even put extra guards at the Vespa museum."

A scooter zoomed past. Two people. The vehicles didn't stick out around here, like hers had in Mabase. It was only dinner-time and the town had already stopped talking about the scooter from the sky, except to complain of the politicians who would never get around to repairing their _piazza_. Naota liked that about this town.

"They did, did they? That's too bad. They were only too happy to help last time."

"I don't even want to know what you told them last time." Naota sat up. He hadn't been eating the pasta, so his hands were empty when he kicked her ankle. "Hey, Haruko. Where's your guitar?"

She looked shifty. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Haruko," said Naota, starting to smile, "Did you lose our guitar?"

Haruko grumbled into her meat sauce.

"The one you took out of my head, really?" It was the one she'd taken; Naota had the one she'd left behind. "Are you going to find some other chibi Eyebrow Man for a replacement?"

"You know," Haruko kicked him back, "Half of that wasn't your guitar."

Yeah, there was that. The other half had belonged to Atomsk, the one Haruko had really wanted, and Naota had just been a doormat for her to trample. Whatever. That wasn't the point. "It came out of *my* head."

Haruko sighed like she was going to expire of adoration. "And what a great head, Ta-kun. Best ever." She snapped out of it and was back to manic. "You're going to get jealous just like Eyebrow Man--"

"Amarao-san--"

" _Amore_ means 'love' but he didn't love anybody, Ta-kun." Her fork twirled pasta off his plate. "He thought he did, but he grew right out of it. Are you like that?"

"You know that's not true. That's not the point," Naota said. He couldn't look at her.

"Uh huh," said Haruko skeptically.

The point was that she'd been the one to fling open the doors.

*

She hit him, she teased him, she made messes, she drove him nuts. She was one of the craziest adults he'd ever met.

He hated how stupid adults could be. How they gave everything away that mattered to them, how they pretended to be things they weren't. They could take everything that mattered to you and turn it into a big joke.

Buried against her heartbeat, he didn't care that all the universe was at her fingertips. It was the first time he understood how a person could throw it all away for another person. It was a dangerous thing to be, and she knew it.

It was the first time he had looked at the flat ocean and seen endless light.

*

"Eat it. I don't want it."

Haruko hardly glanced at him when she grabbed his plate and ate it up. Around them, the town was crawling out for dinner hour, unfolding into the ordinary romance that Naota didn't care to see. Not this time. "Penne all'arrabiata means 'angry pasta.'" He hadn't ordered it for himself.

She gulped down the last mouthful. "So you still don't eat anything spicy."

Haruko got up to go, but her wrist trailed behind and Naota grabbed it. There was a bracelet with a chain-link there that pointed anywhere but down.

"Sometimes," Naota said, and pressed his lips to hers. It was scarily easy. He kissed her until he could taste spice and sweet rosemary, memories all tangled up together.

He didn't look at her face, just the points of her hair, but he could tell by her voice that had gone a shade softer -- she remembered too. "Let's finish what we started."

Head buzzing with more than wine, Naota nodded.

*

Even here, they thought sex made you a man. If that was so, Naota had already made it; he wasn't so sure it made him grown-up.

It had been Ninamori, of course, though not for the reasons everyone else figured. He carried her cello across the bridge and back to one of their houses every day after the school clubs got out. They went through the ritual until it was no longer news, but the relationship itself had only lasted two weeks. Mostly they talked. Or, Ninamori talked. Naota listened despite himself, his head filling up with her secrets. He got better at arguing with her. She wanted to rearrange everything, label things until they fit the shape in her head, and she never apologized for it. She changed her haircut and color as often as she changed the subject.

They argued about making love versus having sex for a month and a half before ceremonially becoming boyfriend-girlfriend. Their rebuttals were consummated on Naota's bed, the bottom bunk. Two weeks later, she ceremonially dumped him while he carried her instrument across the bridge, and then they went back to his house to fold their math homework into animal shapes. She was (in her own words) still seeking out a viable paradigm. "If I want you while I'm incomplete, then you must be an incomplete person," she'd said.

"Whatever. Kanchi, we're out of chips!"

"You still have that weird old television?"

He figured she must really care for him, though. She never objected to the guitar in the corner.

*

Naota had a room across the bridge, small but with a big window that couldn't keep the stars out. He held on hard, scared she'd fly away again, even though with her Vespa broken and her guitar gone, it was impossible for her to get off the ground. And he kissed her, because he could, because she was always surprised when he did, because she was hungry in a way that made him understand why she hadn't brought him along the first time.

He shuddered, stealing more kisses, imagining his younger self blown away like reeds in crossfire. "My bed's really small, Haruko," he said, backing into the door.

"Mmm, it's okay, I only love you for your brain." She grinned like a shark when he snorted, and pushed him till he fell.

Like everything Haruko it was bizarre and thrilling at the same time. She tried to open the window with her foot; he got her shirt open and couldn't stop kissing her shoulder while she squirmed. At the same time she was making so many weird noises that Naota started laughing at her. She threw a shoe at him. They wrestled, half-naked, falling off the bed twice, going quiet only when Haruko looked at Naota with discerning eyes and mapped the differences he couldn't see.

There was a lot of shrieking and grunting. It was pretty embarrassing, even for a neighborhood where nobody hid that kind of thing.

"Haruko! You kicked me in the ear!"

And before he knew it, she was poised over him, inches from sliding... his brother would call it home plate. "This what you wanted, Ta-kun?"

"I only wanted you," he said.

*

When Haruko lived with them, she slept in the top bunk.

After she left, Naota would stare at the crosspieces above him and talk to them, remembering the one night she'd surprised him by answering back.

Once when Ninamori slept over, he told her the one secret he wished he could take back. How he would lie there in the bottom bunk and his heart would sometimes feel like it was aching upwards.

They'd been silent for a while. Ninamori had fixed her hair into ringlets dyed in a color that she claimed was gold. Naota had been wedged against the wall. He could hear his father downstairs analyzing the latest Rebuild rumors. Then Ninamori had turned to him, her cat's eye glasses catching the light, and said, "Promise me you won't ever become a drunkard."

Naota had stared at her, then laid his head down in her hair. "Promise me you won't dye it pink."

She dumped him the next day.

*

"Ta-kun," Haruko gasped. "Ta-kun, I need, uh, I *need*--"

Naota rolled his eyes. "Which part are you missing?"

"Well when you put it that way." Haruko sat up, the thin blanket pooling around her lap. Naota swallowed. There was sweat on her bare breasts, and her upper lip glistened. "I need spark plugs."

"Spark plugs."

"Not just any spark plugs."

Naota nodded. "I know which one you need." There was a long pause. "I'm not letting you inside the factory."

Haruko stuck her tongue out at him. "You're not as much fun, Ta-kun."

"You'll get over it. It's only guarded by guys with machine guns and really big dogs."

Here came the pout. "You want me to get our guitar back, don't you?" Haruko rolled around, stealing the covers. "Don't you?"

Naota said to the ceiling, "I kept your guitar. Kanchi dusts it every week. I told him to call me if it ever played again."

"It plays?"

"It's like--" a single pure note leftover from the explosion, "--a resonance."

* * *

The next day, Naota took out his own scooter and rode it to work. They were still talking about the damaged _piazza_. He talked to his boss, who worked in a shop full of scooter designs: scooters like bullets, like birds, like candy on wheels. His boss agreed he could take the afternoon off.

It was a pretty normal day.

Back in the old town, Naota parked his scooter and walked down to where the Via Dante turned into the Via Della Misericordia. Around him, kids cut school, old people gossiped, couples kissed and giggled. He was carrying a case on his back, except this one was his, and not Ninamori's. (She'd texted him last night from Mabase. This time it was a pair of shoes that they only made in Firenze.)

An hour later, he came out of the church and spotted Haruko coming out of the bar.

"Didn't work, did it," he said.

"Big, big big dogs! With teeth!" She grabbed his lapel. "You gotta help me, Ta-kun. I can't get our guitar without the part, and I can't get the part without the guitar. Do you know how bereft a Vespa is without a spark plug?"

Naota sighed. "Yes, yes I do. Guess it's all in my head, huh? Since you're not bugging some other kid."

Haruko straightened. "You're not a boy." Then she peered at him. "Coming out of a church, now? Did you get all spiritual on me, Ta-kun? There's more than one way to get a revelation."

He shrugged. Gingerly he took the case from around his shoulders. He used it to point at the building behind him. "That's the Church of San Faustino. I like to go there. It's quiet." The case got loaded in Haruko's arms. "I don't think it's the same Saint Faustino that's the patron of single people. Either way, there's a nice statue inside."

"Eh, what's this?" Haruko popped open the case.

"It's my guitar. Not *that* guitar. This one I know how to play." It was an acoustic guitar, nothing fancy like the Gibson Flying V that had popped out of his cranium.

Haruko closed the case and threw the strap over her shoulder. "That doesn't help, Ta-kun."

"It needs to be repaired," Naota went on, pretending not to hear. "There's a luthier in Pisa we need to see."

"You're stubborn!" complained Haruko.

"But I'm driving." Naota grinned at her, waving the scooter keys in her face.

*

They had been riding all day, he remembered that. He couldn't remember what he'd said to her, or if she'd heard any of it over the wind. He'd only kept the memory of her warmth, her closeness, though if he was honest with himself he'd known even then that she was just going to use him.

But.

He'd tried to fight to get what he wanted -- and he did remember the feeling of not knowing what that was. He still got that feeling sometimes. What he *didn't* want was always so clear. Back then, the fight gone out of him, he'd reached out and hung on, clamped onto what he'd so recently lost. Maybe, he thought, maybe this would be a fair trade.

It had seemed like it, at first. The quality of Haruko's lies were somehow better as she pointed out the stars on a cold park bench and let him wrap his arms around her chest. He didn't have the nerve to kiss her (yet). In the half-light, later, huddled together under a pile of newspapers, he'd felt her warm real-ness next to him.

Her voice had been earnest and clean, not freaked out like their ditzy teacher's or condescending like that Eyebrow Guy's or obviously lecherous like his father's. "You're just a boy," she whispered in his ear, "but you're big for your age."

*

They sped through the Tuscan countryside, the sky blue and open like an eye, the ripe fields a familiar yellow. It was easy to take it all in, filling up and letting go, kilometer after kilometer. Besides, if he wasn't careful, some sheep were liable to jump onto the road and try to kill them.

Haruko was sitting side-saddle, the guitar strap looping them together.

"Are you still looking for him?" asked Naota.

"Nyao." Like a cat.

Naota glanced over his shoulder. "You are, aren't you."

"Don't try to be smart, Ta-kun, it doesn't suit you."

He snorted. "It's not like you're hiding it."

She nudged his shoulder blade. "Like you wouldn't go to the ends of the universe, hmm? If you were really that in love."

Naota took the turn slowly. "I stopped looking."

Haruko twisted around.

"I stopped looking, and I started waiting."

"Huh," she said.

"I knew you would come back, someday."

*

She had a way of making him bold. So it hadn't seemed like a great leap to move against that cozy heat, to take something from her. Maybe she was playing him, like she tricked everyone else, but an eye for an eye, a brain for a brain, and he'd discovered it was even better to dare something like this when his brain was tricked into feeling safe. She helped him, too, warmth leaching out of her hands and into his back. It was a stupid thing to do. It reminded him of his brother stealthily pulling his sheets from the top bunk, Naota offering his own for the laundry to cover up the evidence from their nosy dad.

Then Haruko started grinding too, and it wasn't anything like that. Hips weren't so boyish when he was wrapped around them, when he could almost imagine how wet she was. For an endless second he thought this might be what he wanted, then all feeling and thought burst out before he could change his mind.

Later, he thought his sleepiness had made him bold. Sometimes things were easier when you didn't think.

When they were done, she didn't help him clean himself up. That was how he wasn't surprised when she turned on him the next day, the secrets of the universe flowing out of his eyes, his head split open by her guitar; but if kindness was a sign of maturity then he could open for her the same way she'd opened channels for him.

*

When Naota returned from dropping off the guitar, he found Haruko sprawled on the grass and talking on his mobile phone. "--can't do that if you won't give me the resources. Hang on, I'm going to find out." She hung up.

"Who were you talking to?"

She tossed the phone at his head. He had to bat it away, juggling till he caught it. The last call was to the house phone in Mabase. She said, "Kanchi wouldn't put the receiver in the right place, so the reception was terrible."

They ate _biscotti_ while they waited, Haruko making fun of all the people trying to 'hold up' the Leaning Tower. Naota dipped his cookies in a paper cup of Vin Santo and tried to pretend the sweet wine was helping.

"I humor you too much, Ta-kun," said Haruko. "I need our big guitar, the one that really works."

"I want you to have this one," said Naota tightly. "It just needs some tone pins. To increase the sustain."

"You're just taking advantage because I'm stuck here."

Naota ducked his head. He checked his phone. "The guitar's ready." Behind him, Haruko hopped up. "You reminded me of this guy in Pontedera. He hunts for truffles."

"Very expensive taste."

"Yeah, except where he goes, there are no truffles." Naota entered the shop, exchanged perfunctory words with the luthier, and took the guitar back. He cradled it in his arms. "No matter what anyone says to him, he keeps looking for them."

He strummed a chord. The luthier made an appreciative gesture. Naota dumped a wad of bills on the counter and walked out with the guitar. "He gets up in the morning to look for them, and he goes walking in the evening too. He doesn't go to the market because they sell truffles from other places. He can't stand the smell. Some people say he doesn't eat them anymore."

Haruko hummed. "He must've found a really big one when he was younger."

Naota stopped in the middle of the street and looked her in the eye. His fingers strummed another chord, and another. He kept talking: "The thing is, Haruko, I don't know what's more pathetic. The guy, or the dog that keeps sniffing around for what he knows isn't there."

Haruko looked down at his hands on the strings, her brow close to his chin. He could smell her hair -- like cosmic dust. It was the same smell he was sure would never wash out, but it eventually did.

"Which one are you, Ta-kun?"

"I was gonna ask you that."

Her nose twitched. She held up her wrist, the chain-link still pointing up. Probably to that other guitar that was only half Naota's. "Do you think I'm going to use you, Naota?"

Naota tapped the guitar's body. "How stupid do I look," he said fondly. "My N.O.'s no good anymore. It's the left and the right brain: when they grow and change, they reach a new balance. That's why you haven't even tried to hit me."

Haruko blinked at him like a cat startled by water. Then she sneered. "Is that so?"

"You're just going to keep looking for another head that works." Naota lifted his shoulder. Then he handed her the acoustic guitar. "Mine won't open anymore. But I was still waiting for you, Haruko."

"Oh yeah? Why's that? Still pining for me, Ta-kun? Want me to come home and," she cocked her hip, "clean your house?"

"Because you don't forget the first one," Naota told her.

" _Scusi! Il signore?_ " It was the luthier, waving their receipt in the air. " _Ha dimenticato la sua ricevuta!_ "

Haruko looked at the guitar she was holding and shook it till it rattled. A manic grin bloomed on her face. Gently, very gently, she tapped Naota's head with the stock. Then she took off at a run. One leap, two, and she was airborne: a perfect arc.

" _Hey! Hey, che sono-- aiiieeee!_ "

Naota started laughing out loud as the guitar impacted on the Tower of Pisa, as shards rained down on the horrified bystanders, the special spark plug flying out of the guitar and into Haruko's fist.

*

*

*

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:
> 
> 1\. "Do you have _penne all'arriabata_? Thank you, I'll have that and the usual, two orders."
> 
> 2\. "Excuse me! Sir? You forgot your receipt!"
> 
> 3\. "Hey! Hey, what are you-- aiiieeee!"
> 
> and
> 
> Rebuild refers to Rebuild of Evangelion. Naturally.


End file.
